As a taster for next week’s evening of lugubrious music and lopsided prose (details below) here is a classic from the Hooting Yard Treasury of Song. This is one of the pieces which has been set to music and will be performed on the night by Outa_Spaceman, so if you read it carefully and memorise the words, you will be able to sing along!
THE TINY-HEADED BOY
The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled.
He was microcephalic. He had a tiny head.
His hat was made of flowers and his coat was made of lead.
He fixed his gaze upon the sea and this is what he said:
“I am a tiny-headed boy, alone upon the ocean.
My head was of an average size until I drank a potion.
I drank it from a pot I found on a shelf upon the poop.
A potion recommended on Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, Goop.
The ingredients are rain and hail and dew and melted snow,
Heated on the burning poop deck ’til they are aglow.
When it’s hot, you gulp it down and say a little prayer:
Oh burning ship! Oh boundless sea! Oh solids, liquids, air!
And soon enough you find your head will shrink until it’s tiny.
And you stand upon the burning deck and sail across the briny.”
The boy stood on the ship in flames, resolved to say no more.
He stared across the sea until he came in sight of shore.
And like the potion he had gulped, his spirits were now aglow.
Ahead of him lay the coast of the Land of Gwyneth Paltrow!
Frank Key and Outa_Spaceman present An Evening of Lopsided Prose & Lugubrious Music at Woolfson & Tay Bookshop/Cafe/Gallery, 12 Bermondsey Square, London SE1 at 7.00 PM on Friday 18th November. Tickets cost £5 and you can book here.
Members of the League of Dabblers (join here) go free – to request your ticket email editorial@thedabbler.co.uk and join in the fun!
…i’m imagining this set to the tune of Wham’s ‘Club Tropicana’
Oh what an evening that would be. If only I had a potion that would make me so tiny I could send myself across the seas in an airmail envelope, I would be there in a flash – but as I would probably be trampled underfoot, due to new, diminutive form, probably best that no such potion is at hand.
I’m thinking Agadoo by Black Lace. Either that or something complex by Schubert.
Goopalicious and curiously outa space man!
I am contractually restrained from saying anything other than my arrangement contains a whistled refrain.
(and y’really don’t want to get on the wrong side of the ferocious Hooting Yard Legal team.)
O.S.M. B:53
‘The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled.
He was microcephalic. He had a tiny head.
His hat was made of flowers and his coat was made of lead.’
That description brings unbidden a mental image of the famous Eccles.
As I said at Hooting Yard a live album is called for that will stand alongside Velvet Underground 1969 Live and Henry Cow Concerts.
Incidentally on that subject Mr Key, was your copy of H Cow Concerts a DJ promo copy? All three copies I know were so marked.
Mr B : No, I’m afraid it was unmarked and I paid full price for it, whatever sum that was back in 1976. Well worth every penny of course.
Mr. B.
By my imperfect reckoning, the album would need to be a double.
This would completely justify a gate-fold sleeve.
OSM
The big question is, when’s the dubstep remix coming out?
As soon as I can get some decent 8 bit samples.
OSM